Page 116 of Protect My Heart
I smile as Jason comes over to me. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I needed to give you your gift.’
‘You’re the dad. You don’t have to give me a baby gift.’
‘This one isn’t for the baby. It’s for you.’ He takes my hand. ‘I need you to get up for this.’
I stand up and face him. ‘What’s this about?’
He looks into my eyes. ‘I screwed this up, so many times. I went back and forth. Pushed you away. Confused you. Made you wonder if we had a future. And what’s really messed up is that this is what I always wanted. A wife. Kids. A home. But when I got the chance to have it, I ran from it. Because it didn’t happen the way I wanted, the way I imagined. I was selfish, and I’m sorry.’
‘Jason, you don’t have to—’
‘Mia, I need you to know that my feelings for you were always real. No matter what we said this was, it was always real to me. And just to make that perfectly clear, I’m going to do this one last time.’ He takes something from his pocket and gets down on one knee. ‘Mia, will you marry me?’
He holds out a ring. Not a gold band, but a diamond ring.
I hear people whispering, but my gaze remains on Jason.
‘Yes.’ I smile. ‘For the last time, yes, I’ll marry you.’
He slides the gold band off my finger and slides the diamond ring on, then gets up and takes me in his arms. He leans down and talks in my ear. ‘The ring is real this time. No more faking it. It’s all real, from here on out.’
‘You guys, come check out the ring!’ Kate says. ‘It’s gorgeous!’
They all run up to me as Jason steps aside.
‘How did you guys meet?’ Haley asks as she looks at the ring. She’s a friend from school. She was in all my classes. ‘I never heard the story.’
‘They met at my wedding,’ Lacey says, a proud grin on her face. ‘At the reception. They were seated next to each other at the singles’ table.’
‘Wedding?’ I hear my mom say from the laptop.
‘I thought you met at the orchard,’ Candace, another friend from school, says.
I look at Jason.
He comes up beside me and quietly says, ‘It’s up to you.’
I’m not ashamed of how Jason and I met. I don’t care if people know. I just didn’t want my parents finding out.
‘Orchard?’ Lacey laughs. ‘No. They met at my wedding back in January. They were so adorable, dancing and looking into each other’s eyes. And now they’re engaged!’ She smiles at Jason and me. ‘I’d like to take at least a little credit for that.’
She says it jokingly, but no one’s laughing. Gina, Kate, and Lyndsay are giving me sympathetic looks like they want to help me out but don’t know what to say. The other girls look confused.
‘Mia, what is she talking about?’ my mom asks. ‘You said you met Jason last year when you went to the orchard.’
My fear of disappointing my parents rises up again, just like it did when I found out I was pregnant. Trying to please them led to a fake engagement and then the town finding out and all the craziness that followed. It turned out okay in the end, but Ishould’ve just told my parents the truth. They might’ve been disappointed, but I know they love me no matter what.
‘We didn’t meet last fall,’ I say as Jason reaches over to hold my hand. ‘Lacey’s right. We met the night of her wedding.’
‘You met in January?’ my mom says. ‘But that would mean—’ She stops, her brows drawing together, which she does when she’s thinking. ‘Oh. I see.’
‘Mom, I didn’t mean for that to happen. But it did, and I can’t change it.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to,’ Jason says, his arm going around me. ‘If it didn’t happen, you wouldn’t be here with me now.’
I smile at him, then look back at my mom. ‘I should’ve told you the truth. I just didn’t want to disappoint you and Dad. So I told you we met last fall and then told everyone else that.’
